So, Mr Goosen, were you guilty of the worst three-putt in golfing history?

by DEREK LAWRENSON, Daily Mail

Heaven knows, you'd think a game that has been played for more than 500 years and staged over 350 major championships would have exhausted its supply of unprecedented drama.

Then along come two U.S. Opens at the start of a new century to create new bookends. One year, at Pebble Beach, we have Tiger Woods getting as close to perfection as anyone in golf has attained.

The next, at Southern Hills, we have two players groping further into the depths of infamy than Doug Sanders at St Andrews in 1970, or even poor Jean van de Velde at Carnoustie in 1999.

Amazing isn't it? You give players hi-tech drivers and golf balls which go ever more ridiculous distances and the opportunity, if they so desire, to avail themselves of any drug known to any chemist.

But stand them over an 18-inch putt to win a major and the game reverts to its 15th century essence, the eternal puzzle of getting a little ball into a small hole.

Sanders, of course, set the benchmark for what can happen when the enormity of the moment sinks in and the force of panic overloads the senses.

Scott Hoch equalled it when he missed from 18 inches on the first play-off hole against Nick Faldo at the 1990 Masters.

Never before, however, have we seen two players so visibly choke during a five-minute spell of golf that was positively satanic.

First Stewart Cink's miss from 18inches that cost him his place in the play-off - the American committing the cardinal sin of getting ahead of himself, mentally conceding Retief Goosen two putts from 12feet and thinking his own did not matter.

Cink said everything right afterwards about golf being only a game and that he would be able to deal with it. But any professional with any pride in his craft would feel sick to the pit of his stomach at such a basic betrayal of what he is trained to do.

For Cink's sake, we can only hope that he has another opportunity to win the U.S. Open or at least another major championship. But the instinctive thought was that here was an honest but limited golfer's one chance at lasting fame - and missing it would cause a lifetime of regret.

As bad as Cink's miss was, it was merely the prelude to Goosen's aberrations.

He had played so well for 71 and a half holes, led from the first round and brilliantly handled all the game's vicissitudes, played two shots of undoubted quality to a notoriously difficult hole and then, just as they were carving his name on the trophy, he collapsed completely and three-putted from 12feet.

Goosen is a shy man and just as many such people choose acting as a profession and lose their inhibitions on stage. He finds he can perform best on the golf course.

Here, however, he reverted to nature and recoiled from the spotlight. He stood there and simply could not remember the line that was supposed to come next.

In the locker room, a collective groan was heard from the players who had gathered to watch. It came from the very depths of the soul.

Paul Azinger said: 'It was the saddest thing I have ever seen in sports.'

On American television, the peerless analyst and former U.S. Open champion Johnny Miller was rather less sympathetic. He said: 'It's the worst three-putt in the history of golf.'

While all this was going on, Mark Brooks was clearing out his locker. Imagine what was going through his head. Minutes earlier he had also three-putted the 18th, leaving a six-footer in the jaws of the hole. He had watched Goosen hit it to 12feet and his knee-jerk reaction was that his four-under-par total was about to be beaten by at least one, maybe two strokes.

When Goosen missed his two-footer, Brooks could be forgiven the broadest of smiles.

It was the reaction of a golfer who had suddenly discovered that he could live with himself after all.

Brooks restocked his locker, thought about the 18-hole play-off to come and skipped merrily on to the range to hit some balls.